by Koppel, Hans
‘I wasn’t holding that hard,’ he said. ‘You only have yourself to blame, you wouldn’t listen.’
Her eyes were wide open, empty and accusing at the same time. Erik turned away, didn’t want to look at her.
‘You forced me.’
Kathrine’s phone started to ring again. He edged past her lifeless body as if it were a poisonous snake, opened her handbag and looked at the illuminated screen on the mobile phone: Anna.
Erik wanted to answer, to hear her voice. He had to fight the impulse.
The phone stopped ringing. He looked at Kathrine. There were no signs of asphyxiation. He hadn’t held her mouth that hard, just stopped her from screaming. And now she was lying there. Not moving, with a sagging face and staring eyes. He bent down and poked her gently on the shoulder.
It wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t done anything. Just restrained her, and not particularly hard. It wasn’t his fault. She’d been completely hysterical, like a different person.
Maybe she suffered from a congenital heart defect. It wasn’t impossible, in fact it might be quite possible. An aneurysm or something that suddenly, without warning…
‘Think,’ he admonished himself. ‘Think, think, think.’
He couldn’t let an unfortunate mistake ruin his future. It wasn’t fair. Life had never been fair, not to him, enough was enough. This was yet more proof that he always drew the short straw. Why was he being punished? It was wrong. Wrong from a divine perspective. He was young, she was old. Old and meddling and smug. The world was no worse off without her, that was for sure. Not in any way.
It was Anna’s fault. She had poisoned her mother with her malicious stories. She was a pathetic coward who had rewritten events so she could walk free.
Erik had tried. He’d listened. And how had she thanked him? By accusing him of awful things. Just like her daughter, Kathrine claimed to know how the world worked and refused to see that her truth wasn’t necessarily the same as someone else’s. A self-righteous and obnoxious know-all, and when something didn’t suit her, she simply closed her eyes and smiled like a dissenting pastor when Darwin was mentioned.
He needed time. Anna would continue to ring. He looked at the clock. Quarter to one. Anna was at work.
There was a ping on Kathrine’s telephone.
A text from the operator to say she had a voicemail. He picked Kathrine’s phone out of the handbag and listened to it. Anna’s familiar voice. He’d now heard it in so many variations.
‘Hi, Mum, it’s me. You rang. Sorry I was so short with you yesterday. He called. But the police have been to speak to him now. Hope he’ll stop. Hope, hope, hope. I’ll try again later. Lots of love.’
He called.
The way she said it. As if he were a madman who was stalking her. As if she didn’t want his attention and would rather he stayed away. As if he were the only one who was interested. Erik felt his face flush with anger. She was lying. Shamelessly and wilfully.
Another thought forced its way into his conscience. Anna hadn’t mentioned Kathrine coming to see Erik, or asked how it went. In other words, Kathrine had been telling the truth when she said that she was there of her own accord.
Good, good, good, very good. Practical, if nothing else.
He went back to the messages. Opened the thread with Anna, read through what had been written. Short, witty messages: reminders, congratulations, questions about birthday presents, comments, exclamations. Nothing about him, nothing.
He went through Kathrine’s other messages, the majority of them to and from old friends. About everything possible, but generally family and practical arrangements for cultural outings. Galleries, art centres, trips to the theatre and cinema. The longest thread, apart from the one with Anna, was with a someone called Ditte. Erik read all the messages and decided that she was a Danish culture vulture and Kathrine often went to the opera and the Kongelige Teater in Copenhagen with her. He almost felt he knew the woman when the phone started to ring and vibrate again. The screen showed ANNA and Erik pressed FINISH CALL in sheer panic.
Not good. Or maybe it was good. Maybe it was perfect.
Anna was obviously used to getting hold of her mother without any difficulty whenever she wanted and would therefore carry on trying until Kathrine answered.
Erik needed time. Time and an alibi. He went into messages and wrote:
In Denmark with Ditte. Will call tomorrow.
He hesitated momentarily before pressing SEND. The text message winged its way. He was glad. For about half a second. Then it hit him that he had no idea who Ditte was or what she did. Maybe she was abroad or lying in a coma. He’d taken a chance and that was stupid. And what’s more, you could trace telephones. He would have to get rid of it.
He put the phone down on the kitchen table and walked around the flat. He had to keep calm. Not give in to panic. He looked at Kathrine’s lifeless body. She wasn’t a big woman. Couldn’t weigh much more than sixty kilos. He got her handbag and put it on the table, then went through the contents. A purse containing six hundred and forty kronor in cash, about twenty receipts and half a dozen loyalty cards from various retail chains. He put the cash and keys in his pocket and closed the handbag.
Sixty kilos was nothing. He’d filleted halibuts that weighed three times as much when he worked behind the fish counter. He looked at her, caught a whiff of urine and faeces. He rolled up his sleeves as far as he could, bent down and lifted her up. Her head flopped to one side and he dropped the body in a panic. Kathrine fell to the floor with a bump and he stared at her without breathing.
When he realised that she hadn’t moved of her own volition, he bent down and picked her up again. Her behind sagged and he had to fold her arms in a rocking position in order not to drop the body.
Her weight wasn’t a problem. She was probably closer to fifty than sixty kilos. He put her down in the bath and washed his arms in the sink. Not because they were dirty, more for the sake of it. They felt unclean.
He inspected the floor. It was wet, but that was all, just urine. Any shit was in her pants. He dried the floor with kitchen roll.
He would have to get the body out of the flat as soon as possible, but without doing anything rash and desperate, or he risked being discovered. But how could he get a body out? He couldn’t, certainly not in one piece.
Erik went back to the bathroom and studied her body. She was a fish, he’d just have to look at it like that.
Another ping on the mobile phone. He went over to the kitchen table and had a look. New message.
Copenhagen? Again. Have fun and say hello.
Erik replied:
Thank you. Will do.
Lots of women were terrified of becoming their mothers. Whether it was their voice, or movements, sagging skin, unwillingness to change or whatever. Few things seemed to scare middle-aged women more than any similarity with the source of their origins.
The opposite was true of Anna. She couldn’t imagine a better fate. There were times when she wished she could be exactly like her mother. She even envied Kathrine her age. Anna wanted to be at the stage in life where she no longer worried about silly things, where she felt strong enough to say what she thought and humble enough not to judge. Her mother never forgot that everyone had their story and all you had to do was scratch the surface with a nail.
Anna’s mother was able to enjoy life, and she still wanted to improve herself.
Copenhagen, for example. Nine out ten people were forever banging on about how close to the continent they were, but how often did they actually cross the water? It wasn’t exactly every day.
Anna lifted the receiver and called reception.
‘You are letting calls through again, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, absolutely,’ Renée assured her.
‘It’s just the phone’s so quiet.’
‘That’s because no one has called.’
‘Okay, that’s good. Thanks.’
Anna picked up the printout with the inc
omprehensible soup of letters and made another attempt. This time the letters formed words that made sentences that combined made a largely understandable, if not particularly interesting, text.
Erik found a piece of paper and pen and sat down at the kitchen table. He tapped the bottom of the pen against his teeth. What did he need?
Meat cleaver
Alternatively, one of those square Asian knives that could be used for everything. Ikea probably had an adequate variation. His own bread knife certainly wouldn’t do and the filleting knife was really only meant for skin and muscle. Good to open things up, but not much else.
Heavy-duty refuse sacks
How many? He went out and looked at Kathrine. Her legs were bent. He pushed them up even more. Folded the arms more. When rigor mortis set in it would be a lot harder. The torso was a problem. He could always divide it just below the ribs. And remove the head.
Two bin liners for the arms and legs. One for the pelvis and head, one for the upper torso. Four in all. And double, obviously, to avoid the risk of leakage. So eight. Plus a couple more for clothes and waste.
He sat down at the kitchen table again. What else? He couldn’t carry out twenty-kilo rubbish bags, that would look suspicious.
Removal boxes
Naturally. Easy to carry, wouldn’t attract attention. They were sold in packs of ten at Ikea.
Entrails. What about the contents of her insides? Another brainwave.
Blender
He could flush the mix down the toilet.
It would be important to close the rubbish sacks properly before he took them out, because of the smell. If he decided to dump them in the sea, he would have to open them again to put in some stones or something else suitably heavy before he pressed out as much air as possible and closed them again. In other words, he needed something that would allow him to open and close the bags safely.
Cable ties, clippers
What else? Of course.
Gloves, apron
Normal washing-up gloves would be fine. And it would be good if the apron was plastic so he could just wipe any mess off.
He folded the list and put it in his back pocket, felt his front pocket to see if the car keys were there, and left the flat.
38
Erik turned Kathrine’s phone to silent, wiped it against his top and threw it into a rubbish bin outside Ikea. He left it on so that if it was traced it would show that she had left Erik’s flat and gone to Väla. He got a trolley and raced through the prescribed consumption path that was the furniture giant’s trademark.
He picked out the items he had on his list. He didn’t manage to find a suitable apron, so he picked up an extra roll of refuse sacks instead. He could make his own apron. He put all the things in the car and drove home to the flat. He was lucky enough to get a parking place right outside the entrance. That certainly made things easier.
A quarter of an hour later he’d carried everything in and was dressed in a black rubbish bag, with holes for his arms and head. He had a T-shirt on underneath and yellow rubber gloves on his hands. A pair of scissors, the filleting knife and meat cleaver were lying on the toilet seat. He’d arranged the empty refuse sacks on the floor.
At one point he was close to giving up. A person wasn’t a halibut. He had to cut, hack, prise and sweat to get the limbs off and when he split open her belly like a surgeon, the entrails spilled out. It smelt fucking awful and he had to run back and forth between the bathroom and the kitchen in order to cut and blend her innards into something that could be flushed down the toilet. And then there was a problem with the torso, which was too big to fit in a removal box, even without the head. He was forced to break and remove the pelvis.
It was five o’clock by the time he could finally take off the gloves and rinse the blood from his arms. He went to get a removal box and cursed Ikea several times before he managed to fold it together. He then made up a further three, before checking that it was dark outside. That suited him perfectly.
A whole afternoon without any reminders. Her relief edged into anxiety. Anna had thought the danger had passed a couple of times before. Erik Månsson was like two people. One who was friendly and charming, the other who was unreasonable and ruthless.
She hadn’t been ambiguous. To the contrary, she had been too harsh and offended him. That was obviously it, otherwise he would never have reacted so aggressively.
She stood at the bus stop and looked around. She was keeping an eye out for his car, terrified that he would pop up at any moment.
Was he mentally ill? Genuinely? Psychopaths were said to be experts at reading people and winning their trust. Only to suddenly turn. Erik Månsson had a screw loose, there was no doubt about it. Whether he was actually dangerous as well remained to be seen. But it was unnerving enough to have him sneaking around in the bushes.
The video, oh my God, the video.
Immediately Anna was all hot and sweaty. How could she even doubt it? Erik Månsson was sick, completely mad. Or was it down to his age, something that his generation did? God knows, they seemed to document everything else in their lives and publish the most uninteresting thoughts for everyone’s perusal.
She saw the bus approach in the distance, got out her pass. The bus stopped, she got on and looked closely at every passenger as she made her way down the aisle. She sat right at the back, so she had an overview, didn’t want to risk any nasty surprises.
Erik cleaned Kathrine’s nails and scrubbed them with a brush. He had no scratch marks but she had tried. He rinsed every body part with the shower, then dried them carefully with a towel before putting them in double refuse sacks. He put the sacks into the removal boxes, rinsed out the bath and the sink and then took a quick shower himself.
How did you get rid of a body? Obviously, the best thing would be to dump the body parts with something heavy somewhere out to sea. But you needed a boat to do that and even if Erik had access to one, he couldn’t load it up with removal boxes or heavy black rubbish bags without attracting attention. The coastline was watched. There were always people looking out at sea and keeping an eye on what was going on on the shoreline.
An alternative was to drive up to Kullaberg and throw the sacks over the cliffs under cover of darkness, but he guessed that it wouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks before some diver would be splashed across a double spread in the local paper, telling the story of his macabre find.
Rubbish tip? No, they had cameras and checked everything that was driven in or out.
Was it even necessary to hide the body? The main thing was that he got rid of it without being caught.
He went out on to the landing and called the lift, carried the boxes out and went down.
‘Oh, are you moving?’
A helpful neighbour held open the door.
‘Just helping a friend with a few things.’
Erik carried the boxes out and stacked them in the car.
It was so easy when you didn’t try to hide anything. It was stupid to make things more complicated. If everyone was screaming, you’d only hear the person who whispered. Erik could leave the boxes outside the Salvation Army in town and no one would notice. But perhaps that was being a bit foolhardy. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if the body wasn’t discovered for a few days.
He headed north, without knowing why. Somehow it felt most natural. Perhaps because she lived there. He saw that the façade of a building was being renovated on Margaretaplatsen. Big skips on the street. He got as far as Pålsjö before he turned around and drove back. He parked in front of a skip, opened the boot and took out the removal boxes. Then he lifted out the black refuse sacks and dumped them over the edge.
An elderly couple walked by. They looked at him and Erik gave them a friendly smile. They reciprocated, no doubt knowing themselves how hard it was to get rid of bulky waste. Erik put the removal boxes back in the car and drove away. He found a recycling station further south, tore the boxes to pieces and stuffed them into the green igl
oo marked ‘Cardboard’.
When he got home, someone else had taken the perfect parking place. His bad luck never ran out.
39
‘Where did you say your mother was?’
‘Copenhagen. She was going to see Ditte.’
Anna’s reply was mechanical. Her thoughts were elsewhere, in a happier space. As the bus had passed Erik’s flat, she’d seen him filling the car with removal boxes. Whatever had the policeman said to him? It didn’t matter. If it meant that Erik was leaving town, she was eternally grateful.
‘Theeeeaaaatre?’ Magnus exclaimed.
Anna shrugged.
‘No idea.’
‘Don’t see what pleasure she gets out of it. Sitting there, crammed in with four hundred dentists pretending to be intellectual.’
‘Dentists?’
‘The only professional that goes to the theatre.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know,’ Magnus quipped, happily.
Then he became serious again.
‘I don’t get it. It’s a dead art form. What’s wrong with the cinema?’
‘The one doesn’t exclude the other, does it?’
Hedda laughed with delight in her room. She was skyping a friend with the door shut. Anna and Magnus looked at each other and smiled.
‘At that age, even the theatre was fun,’ Magnus said. ‘It’s behind you! No, it’s not.’
‘She’s not that little any more.’
‘Almost feels like it.’
They settled down in front of the television. Sat beside each other on the sofa and with relative indifference watched news reports on various ways to die. Magnus took Anna’s hand. She glanced up at him and smiled before looking back at the telly and swallowing.